“Where is an empty bedchamber?” he bellowed at the poor man.
“Here, sir.” Shelton rushed to open the nearest door.
“And the key for the lock?” Brodie held out his free hand, ignoring the tiny fists that beat at his back in desperation.
“Let go of me, you brute!” Lydia yelled. Brodie took the key from Shelton and carried his wriggling cargo inside. He headed straight for the settee at the foot of the bed and sat down. After a brief struggle with her, Brodie slid her down in front of him and over his lap. Then he brought his hand down on her bottom, just hard enough to catch her attention.
“Ouch!” Lydia shrieked, though in a way that spoke of indignity rather than pain.
“That is for fussing,” he said and gave her a second whack. “That is for not listening to me.” Another three smacks and she quieted her outbursts.
He stopped, his hand hovering above her bottom, before he hesitantly placed it on her lower back, hoping to soothe her. He hadn’t spanked a woman as punishment in some time, and he wondered if he had gone too far. Lydia was a gentle-born woman and not used to such treatment. His intention wasn’t to harm her, but to get her attention and remind her that he was in charge. He turned her over on his lap, and his heart clenched at the sight of tears streaming down her face.
“Please let me go,” she said in a small voice.
“Did I hurt you?”
“Please, let me go,” she said again, and he did. She almost fell trying to get off his lap. Lydia curled her arms around herself and rushed away from him to the corner of the room farthest from him.
“Lass, I’m sorry.” He stood and came toward her, but she turned her back on him.
“Please leave me alone.”
Brodie stopped. He stared at her back a moment before he nodded to himself and left the bedchamber. He locked her in and slipped the key into his pocket before he headed down the stairs. Rafe was waiting for him in the drawing room, drinking a whiskey and lounging in a chair by a freshly lit fire.
“That was quick.” Rafe chuckled until he saw Brodie’s face, and then he sobered. “What happened?”
“I spanked her,” Brodie grumbled as he threw himself into a chair.
“Oh?” Rafe asked, a slight edge to his tone.
“Not hard, mind you. At least, I dinna think so. I just wanted her to stop and listen.”
“Not the best way to open someone’s ears, going through the derriere.” Rafe snorted at his own comment.
“Aye, well, she wasn’t going to listen to reason, was she?” The truth was he didn’t know what he’d hoped to accomplish. Even with all his restraint, he felt like he had been channeling his father. He felt like a bloody bastard.
“Perhaps not. You are right, though—she cannot go see her father. He’ll take her home, but only after he challenges you to a duel. Assuming you don’t let your temper get the better of you and kill the man before that.”
“Aye. I wouldna be able to refuse his challenge, not after what he’s done.”
“And he’s just as honor-bound to offer the challenge for what you’ve done to Lydia.” Rafe sipped his whiskey before he stood and walked over to the tray on a nearby table and poured Brodie a glass. Brodie downed it all in one gulp.
“You know, Kincade, that’s a sipping whiskey.”
Brodie snorted. “For a Sassenach, maybe.” He held out his glass, and Rafe refilled it. “It’s not just the threat of a duel, though.”
“Oh? And what else is there?”
Brodie stared at the amber liquid in his glass. “I dinna rightly know. It’s the way she’s been treated by her own father. The man clearly favors his younger child over her, which makes not one bloody bit of sense. I want to show her that I care about her, even if he doesna care.”
“So you admit that, do you?”
Brodie didn’t look at his friend but nodded. “’Tis a bit hard not to. She’s sweet, intelligent, passionate, kind, amusing . . .”
Rafe crossed his arms and frowned at the flames, still holding his own whiskey. “Well, now that our evening has been thoroughly spoiled, what are you going to do about Lady Rochester and Mr. Hunt?”
“We must put them off the scent,” Brodie said.
“That might be manageable, but you don’t know Lady Rochester. She is as clever as her children, perhaps more so. She won’t fall for any trick for long.”
“Well, unless you have any better ideas, I say we send her on a wild chase to the north while we leave Edinburgh.”
“As a plan, it has the virtue of simplicity. I’ll have Shelton send her a message tomorrow after we leave for your castle, that we arrived late and left early the next morning for the Isle of Skye. I have a friend there we can send them to. By the time they realize they were fooled, we will be far away.”
“Good. I want to be off as soon as possible.” He didn’t want to run into Jackson Hunt, but he also didn’t want to let Lydia go. At least, not yet.
Lydia rubbed a hand over her bottom and cursed Brodie Kincade with every foul bit of language she knew—which, unfortunately, wasn’t nearly enough to do justice to her feelings.
Her pride had been hurt far more than she had been physically. He had treated her like a misbehaving child, and he’d tried to make her feel to blame for resisting his commands. And on some bizarre level, she did. That made no sense whatsoever.
She should defy him at every turn, shouldn’t she? He had no right to tell her that she could not see her own father. He was the one who’d kidnapped her. Her choosing to stay with him did not change that fact. She had believed him to be an honorable man who had taken drastic action to avenge a wrong made against him. She did not agree with such measures, but on some level could understand it. Even his stubbornness in not believing her was understandable, given Portia’s talent for deception.
But now she’d learned he had known the truth about her and her sister, and still he would not let her go. How did he square that with his so-called honor?
Furious, Lydia paced the length of the bedchamber, scowling as she tried to figure out what to do. If Brodie returned here tonight expecting to bed her, he would be sorely disappointed. For the first time in her life, she wanted to behave as Portia would. She wanted to scream and throw expensive breakable things into the nearest wall.
Yet she checked that destructive urge. This was Lord Lennox’s house, who was blameless in all this. She wouldn’t damage his home, especially when he had no idea his brother and brother-in-law were using it for such nefarious purposes.
Lydia paused in her pacing to look at the window opposite the bed. She approached the sash window and pushed it open. The perfumed smells of a well-tended garden came from below. She peered into the gloom, seeing through the growing darkness to the ground below.
It was a decent fall, and she could not jump without severe injury. But there was a trellis covered in ivy directly below the window. Lydia retrieved her reticule that had been packed away in her luggage, which still contained a small bit of coin from Brodie, and secured it to her wrist before she lifted her skirts and hefted a foot over the edge of the window. She found the latticework of the trellis after a moment and started to put pressure on it to see if the thin wood would bear her weight. Then when she was satisfied that it was safe, she began her descent. It wasn’t easy, because her arm was still quite sore, but she was able to favor her good arm as she climbed down.